Fully Dynamic Diffuse Global Illumination

S***. that's a good point. I sorta suspected the scene size was very small for a reason, but considering our game's view range goes up to 6km with a minimum of 500m, yes that would be a necessity.

Going just from 5.2.2 to 5.3 isn't simple when you figure that by default it makes the game look like crap. People (customers) complained and we had to put it back the way it was. Players don't care about "now our lighting is mathematically correct" or whatever was in the 5.3 update notes, they only cared that the game went from looking amazing, to looking like crap. I'm told this is because every single metal/roughness map we have for the game is now basically wrong since the way unity handles them is now different, and i/we straight up don't have the resources to go back and re-do every single metal texture. That, and we use Time of Day, which is notorious for incredibly infrequent updates (the last being November of last year) with way too many people who went up to 5.3 still waiting on that guy to update ToD to correctly support 5.3.

I'm rambling. Basically, that totally sucks and i really wish he could get it working right with 5.2.2. But if there's only one thing on Earth that could be as vital as I find SEGI to be that would force us to go beyond 5.2.2, i guess it would be SEGI.

 

I believe that is because they finally started using the GGX shading model and I believe once you found a way to tweak an example map to look good with the new implementation you could create a photoshop droplet or something similar that batch processes all your metallic maps. Shouldn't be that hard to do I'd imagine, but I could be wrong. Since this affected every developer I'd be very surprised if no one has posted a good solution for this issue yet.
If this is the only thing holding you back, I'd investigate if I were in your position. TOD with either update one day and then you'll be ready, or it never updates and you'll likely be forced to ditch and replace it at some point.

 

Hi.

This Real time GI looks fantastic.

-Is Voxel Based.., right?.. can your implementation support dynamic object deformation for the voxelization stage?.., i ask because AFAIK cryengine does not supported.

Thanks

 

The Sponza demo is super duper beautiful! A bit slow on high settings but I get 60+ on medium settings, which still look fantastic! Still a bit high for such a small scene.. but not bad. Presuming it scales up well. I have an old i7 and a GTX 670. Not the best computer around, but I do expect my gamers to have less computing power so.. 'less is more' Anyway, this is amazing stuff, I can't wait!

 

I think you'll never going to get this asset! because we all been waiting over 1 year and still nothing. does it'll going to release at all?

 

@sonicether
would be great to hear some news from you.
Thanks in advance.

 

@Sonic, pls release !

 

80$ is expensive for demo version

 

Then the amount some professionals, including myself, would pay would make you throw up.

 

^This...

Yea seriously I'd pay a S***-ton more than that...

...in fact for a lot of assets. I'm shocked at the value we get for some of these things (e.g. Playmaker )

 

I will pay $80, no problem @Sonic

 

Can we use this of real big maps? for example at a distance of 20'000 (camera distance)

 

You're inquiring on the technical capabilities of something currently under open accusation that it's existence is purely theoretical.

That's like asking whether the chocolate-covered angels in heaven are made out of milk chocolate, or dark chocolate.

 

You don't consider the builds he gave us to be obvious proof of its existence?

--IronDuke

 

"By me, mostly."

 

Just because there are builds available acting as a proof of existence, it doesn't automatically mean that we'll definitely see it (i,e the solution) in the end. No guarantees so far, only "soon"-mumbling... for months.

 

Use CryEngine and Svogi if you your project really needs real time Gi and it is really fast.

 

This is starting to rot as Livenda's GI post did.

 

Same point !

 

Did you just recommend throwing 2.5 years of game developed in Unity in the trash and starting over with a different engine as a reasonable course of action to gain one graphical effect.

 

You will gain a big performance, a complete AI system , but i agree migrating assets won't be an easy task and you'll had to learn the engine coding , flowgraphs, UI , tools and workflow.
I was speking about new starting projects mainly and people able to work with a harder to use engine.

 

I'm sorry to see all the doubt growing in this thread, and in a way it's completely understandable. Development has been quite difficult due to personal matters--whether you want to believe me or not about that is entirely your choice. In case you guys doubt my intentions on finishing what I've started, I have this to say...

What could I possibly stand to gain just stringing you guys along about something that never eventually makes it to the Asset Store? A lot is at stake for me here. Developing something for over a year and sacrificing other projects only to let it fade out and forget about it and never release it would be an abysmal choice for me career-wise. Not only would my reputation suffer greatly, but working for over a year on something that never earned me a single penny isn't very smart. I'm in a situation where I have no choice but to ensure this project sees completion. So, if you don't believe me when I say that it is my primary career aspiration to bring practical real-time GI to game developers, at least believe that I have a lot to lose if I don't deliver and a lot to gain if I do.

I have absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by lying and being deceitful to you guys, but I don't expect you to take my word for it. Once this is on the Asset Store, my work will speak for itself.

 

@sonicether don't pay any attention to the negativity in this thread. You would think that people who are building their own game projects would understand the time commitment and pitfalls in developing such technology. (sheesh!) You do what's best for your project and release when you think it's ready. Trying to satisfy the mob is quite impossible in the long run anyway, as long as you can satisfy yourself I think you'll find the reward in that much longer lasting. Good luck!

 

It's not negativity, it's reality. Remaining skeptical is just logic, seeing three other GI solutions failed in the past. Also, I don't think fanboyism is best placed here.

 

Did you read any of SonicEther's post? At all? He just told us:

And that's true. What would he gain? Nothing. Unless you count a massively negative reputation... What would he lose? Again, his good reputation, and from the sounds of it, he'd go broke too or something.
I understand a lot of GI solutions in the past have failed to deliver, and scepticism is the natural approach. At first, when I heard of this project, I too was guarded. At this point, however, Sonic has shown us enough to prove that: (A) the project exists; (B) it runs pretty fast; (C) it is exactly what he says it is; (D) when he says he is going to do something as regards the project, so far, he's always done it.
Also, being optimistic is not fanboyism. I don't know if you've ever had anyone attack a pet project of yours, insisting it'll fail, but it's very depressing. If I know anything about human behavior, keeping an optimistic outlook and cheering Sonic on will help him work, and get the job done faster.

@sonicether What all is still left to do at this point before the project is complete?

--IronDuke

 

It's pretty pointless either way to discuss that again and again. This is a WIP thread. Yes, odds are that the product will never be released. Everyone understands that and if they don't they should. Sonicether has no contract or obligation to any of us. This is his thread to show off his work in progress and it's implicit that for it to be released it may take a day, a month, a year, 10 years or never at all. If you can't cope with that then don't read WIP threads. Focus on released assets, and if they do something fishy or fail to deliver promises that were made to sell an existing product, then you have a case of something bad going on.

So when people say things like "he's at an open accusation" it sounds downright silly, like this is a big established business and there are lawsuits involved saying that sonicether is doing something egregious. It's childish to treat it like that. This is a WIP thread, it may never see the light of day, it's just a thread for sonicether to show off something he's doing, by definition. You don't have to remind everyone that posts here that GI solutions never get released, because it literally offers nothing for the thread. It sounds childish, like you once misplaced expectations on a different product, can't cope with it and now needs to remind everybody that they're "fanboys" or what not. It only makes the thread devolve into pointless discussions like this.

Everyone knows that this product might never be released. We've all seen projects like this fail again and again. There's no obligation from sonicether to deliver us anything either. There you have it.

 

You don't like to wait to play with GI , if i was as impatient as you i would have used CryEngine and SVOGI.

 

See the post from DivergenceOnline: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/fu...obal-illumination.314748/page-11#post-2571584
I wouldn't switch to another engine just because of a single graphic effect. Not to mention that CryEngine is kinda a mess. And no, nothing to do with waiting or impatience. I'm just sick and tired of people claiming things they probably can't hold of. SE is the fourth guy coming up with a GI solution and while I do believe he has the knowledge to actually finish this, I still remain (a bit) skeptical. You never know what the future brings.

 

@Mauri I don't think there was anything fanboyish about my post. I'm merely offering encouragement to the developer, because I know first hand how much work and frustration is involved with undertakings such as this, and I also know that a thread filled with negative speculation does not help anybody. If you need to vent it doesn't serve your goal of ever seeing this product by casting irrational doubts here. It also is not fair to this developer for you to project your own previous disappointments in other projects onto this one.

I'm all for having patience and caution while following the developments of this project, but I don't see how all this grumbling does anything positive at all. Thus, I choose to remain positive in what I write here.

 

I played with sonicether GI demos and the frame rate impact is too big , you jump from 200 to 60 fps still not at best GI quality settings. It would need big improvments to be ready for any game on standard PC, today it is too much GPU intensive.
CryEngine is a real gem about real time GI, SVOGI impact is minimal, it is not a mess , it has a hard to use engine with high end graphics. If Divergence Online game was made with CryEngine 4 it will get real time fast GI and a game with big outdoors running really fast.

 

Woah dude... are you really promising your players features you have no control over? That's just bad business.

Also he's taken no money for this, and clearly stated its all experimental. he has absolutely no obligation to release anything.

 

Actually I'm a human being who does actually know what it's like to have to wait for something.

Everyone has to do this. You are not special in your unique circumstances.

@DivergenceOnline Criticism is good and I'm sure is very welcome as long as it's constructive, and it mostly has been to this point. But that isn't what's happening here recently... this thread has started to devolve into a listing of vaporware accusations, and a dumping ground for personal frustration, despite the release of actual in-progress demo examples that we can all use to judge current progress and viability with. I'm not sure what else could be done by the developer to encourage positive participation here.

If it's not ready in the timeframe you want, well I can see that may be frustrating, but your project timeline has nothing to do with @sonicether. As @Golesy said above, promising features which you have no control over is likely to have an unhappy ending. Truly Dynamic GI would be an amazing thing but it shouldn't be the deciding factor in the success of any game.

I trust the experience you've gained here patiently following the development of this product will be invaluable to you in dealing with your own reasonable customers.

 

Im sorry but this is not criticism, this is pure flaming about a non existant product based on a work in progress thread that you have spent no money on. I could understand your point of view only if you had financed the creation of this software and the developer was late to his promises but thats not the case here, since the dev didnt create any early access of his project and asked for no money.

Thats true. If you think that your game's success is based upon a realitme gi solution then you should have hired the developer yourself and have him work his gi solution for you. But relying on others people work when you arent paying them to do that work makes no sence to me. The developer owes you nothing. He could really decide not to release his product and only licence it to a specific company, its his right.

No. The developer has no obligations if he hasnt taken any money from you. And with all the hype he could have easily done that, but he refused multiple times on this thread.

That makes perfect sence. You payed for a product and you get no support. I would contact the developer and the asset store and ask for a refund. Thats not the case for this product though.

 

Guys, this is once again going out of control. I guess is better stop all that, because the thread will be locked again. Let's leave Sonic do his job instead of rushing which never helps!

 

I agree, Natural bloom had some problems and the plugin is no more worked; perhaps it begins to be too much plugins to maintain for soniceither ?
Anyway do you think real time GI will really change totally your game look and the gameplay ? i don't think you'll attract lot more player only about a lightening enhancement. I think you got lot of work to make your game really acceptable and more finished until you should care about real time GI

 

As a Technical Art Director for ~10 years or so and 3d artist for a while before that, I think this is the single most exciting plugin in development for Unity that I know of. We generate a lot of our art procedurally at runtime so there's no way of baking down lightmaps beforehand. Currently we're using SESSAO to get that one colour bounce, which is a pretty good solution, but this will make it all the better. I remember when GI first became somewhat practical in offline 3d rendering around 2001 with stochastic monte carlo and I'm super excited to see how close we are to having actual realtime GI in our engine of choice. Keep at it @sonicether! And if you need some help testing in real world scenarios, I am working on two already graphically demanding games in development so we can help squeeze out every last drop of performance. http://www.gladiator.training/ and http://www.mandategame.com/

 

Sonic !! Pls ping the thread with news !

 

You know you have a great product when people are going this crazy over it before it's even released..

 

There is people that are not able to wait quietly, if it takes months or a year, people just have to accept it or choose another solution instead of beeing so impatient and negative.

 

Please cite another viable solution if you can.

 

I strongly suggest we keep this thread about Sonic Ethers GI, including feedback, suggestions, questions, but not much else. Im pretty sure that Sonic, the moderators and readers would agree.

 

The other solution could be getting shadows less strong , or tweak Unity Image Effects to fake some sort of GI with increasing luminosity on shadows with tone mapping or other effects, until you would get a real time GI.
Your game is not fast , adding real time GI will make it run worse, you should really consider it as a graphic option until you don't care loosing some players.
Imagine someone selling some Dragon Age Inquisition game, but the game is missing combat elements, it lacks quests and 3D content , it has incomplete gameplay. The players complain because it is too much as prorotype and the game author wants to add real time GI as a prirority task

I agree, people begging for the plugin should stop and give him a break.

 

Thanks, however we aren't currently looking for feedback on our game from people who don't own it

And it would definitely be best to contain the conversation to SEGI, or at the very least if you're going to stray as I've done in the past, to SE or his products.

 

Will be removing non sonic ether talk from this point. Make another thread if you will discuss alternatives and so on. This is a thread about sonic ether's wip solution. Thread-only bans will result if not on topic. Be polite and respectful everyone.

Author has done no harm, asked for no cash.

 

Hi, I'm late to this post.

Do you know an approximate date when it will be released? Or you do not know anything yet?

 

Would this work on models imported at runtime? I am importing obj's at runtime, so no access to Enlighten for GI, using SESSAO for some 'faux' GI .

 

It's completely realtime, specifically for games using PCG or similar. It should work just great for you.

--IronDuke

Disclaimer: I am not the developer of this software, just an excited fan.

 

I've got a list of cleanup work to get done before it's ready for the first beta, blatant bugs and such that I've discovered though more extensive testing, though I'm not going to be too worried about the more minor issues, since it'll be the first beta version, after all. Though, It's hard to draw a line in the sand and say, "Alright, this is first-beta-on-Asset-Store ready."

Yep, if they're in the scene they can be voxelized.

 

Can we expect framerate improvments ? It was too slow compared to CryEngine Svogi.